The Lazy Girl Job hashtag has reached more than 40 million views on TikTok. The creators behind the content are young and, for the most part, women. What they ask for is simple: flexible work that doesn’t require too much effort, fair pay, and a healthy work-life balance. And, of course, not being seen as a lousy professional for aspiring to this.
The hashtag went viral when it was used by Gabrielle Judgy, an influencer popular for her advice for young professionals. What does she recommend? In short, don’t get caught up in an absorbing corporate culture that monopolizes everything. Faced with this threat, “lazy girl jobs” would be those that allow you to live the life you want.
So where’s the issue? At first, there doesn’t seem to be one. But this viral trend on social networks offers light on how Generation Z understands work, and the enormous chasm that exists between how they see it and how previous generations approached work.
It’s typical for young people to feel misunderstood by those who came before them, but perhaps “Gen Z” most fits this cliché. What they see as mere demands, their elders only see tantrums typical of a fragile generation.
In this case, it is no different. And it’s worth asking: Are the “lazy girls” of TikTok asking for conditions that should be fair for everyone? Or is this simply another example of an aversion towards making any effort at all that is so often attributed to the generation?
It’s not laziness; it’s wanting to be useful (and to have a personal life)
The question is whether this trend, like quiet quitting, speaks to us about a sensible demand or about the anti-effort and anti-work culture of Generation Z.
Lazy girls don’t usually have a poor worth ethic; they demand, however unrealistic it may be, jobs that add meaning to their lives
The truth is that, no matter how much we hear today’s young people do not want to work, what they themselves say suggests the opposite: according to Deloitte’s 2023 Millennial and Gen Z survey, work is fundamental to the sense of identity for young workers. But what’s happening is that they seem to value the qualitative – and emotional – aspects of employment (flexibility, sense of personal fulfillment, work-life balance) more than the merely quantitative ones (productivity, salary, number of hours worked).
This is also a response against the culture of being at work to be at work and the bureaucratization of work, which fosters demoralization and generates the feeling of doing meaningless work.
But we can’t forget that Gen Z is also known as the side hustle generation: a term that refers to a secondary professional activity carried out in addition to their “normal” jobs, and that’s more related to their hobbies. It’s what we might have previously known as moonlighting, but with the added benefit of harnessing the opportunities that the internet offers to monetize personal passions. Faced with lack of motivation in their professional work and financial uncertainty, young people are starting to sell products on Amazon, reselling second-hand clothes, setting up small businesses on Etsy and, above all, creating content on social networks.
You could say that, this in mind, those with side hustles don’t have poor work ethics, quite the opposite. Furthermore, the hypothetical jobs recommended as appropriate for “lazy girls” are in marketing or public relations departments. That is, they are not the “easiest” out there. And, of course, not everyone is qualified for them since they usually require at least a college degree.
The Deloitte survey also reveals that work-life balance is a priority for younger workers when job hunting, coinciding with their growing interest in part-time hours and shorter work weeks.
You might say, therefore, that what these “lazy girls” are also defending is the right to enjoy free time. The bad news is that it is not entirely clear that navigating one’s professional life based on a hashtag is going to give them what they’re looking for.
A little marketing, a little reality
Including laziness at work may not look good on your resume, but it was a marketing campaign that easily went viral in the world of algorithms.
Influencer Gabrielle Judgy certainly has a reason to defend the hashtag. She opted to follow the same idea that she advocates for, and it didn’t go badly: she is now the virtual coach of more than 150,000 followers on TikTok alone, to whom she offers content with career advice along with paid courses.
Her monthly income is in the range of $15,000 and $30,000 thanks to advertising agreements with brands and the digital products she offers, according to Judgy. Among them is the Lazy Girl employment program, a service that uses ChatGPT to search for job opportunities adapted to users’ needs.
When we see the videos of all the lazy girls on TikTok, what we’re seeing is the success of a marketing campaign perfectly designed by a social media professional.
But its success is due to the fact that it hits the right buttons in Generation Z’s relationship with work: rejection of a culture that generates higher burnout rates in women and the dizzying pace that makes work-life balance impossible and, above all, stepping back from the broken promise of prosperity that had motivated millennials.
“The boss generation thought, ‘If I buy into the system and play the long game, I will be rewarded for it.’ Gen Z is saying, ‘If I buy into the system and play a long game, there is no guarantee I’ll be rewarded for it, so I’m not going to act like you,’” Suzy Welch, a professor at the New York University Stern School of Business and senior business advisor at Brunswick Group, told CBS
There are plenty of reasons why Gen Z-ers think this way. Job insecurity has put young people in precarious jobs with increasingly lower salaries in a complicated economic context, which hinders the likelihood of being able to buy a home or start a family.
Ultimately, although Gabrielle Judgy recognizes and addresses real needs, it’s ironic that that very messaging comes from an influencer who needs you to buy that message to also pay her bills. Judgy says that “lazy girl jobs” allow people to “live their lives and be amazing humans,” but the reality is that she wants users to pay for her online course.
The flipside of “lazy jobs”
Regardless of Judgy’s intentions, the fundamental message for “lazy girls” is, on paper, quite interesting: take charge of your professional future by looking for an undemanding job that allows you to concentrate on the career you really want to pursue or on your personal life.
Reality, as always, is more complex.
Promoting undemanding jobs may seem like the perfect option to spend the workday on the beach, but it is counterproductive in the long term
There’s a flipside to these jobs for the “lazy.” Firstly, although they require less time in person, the dedication required does not always decrease proportionately. And that is on top of the demands of a side hustle. Oftentimes, the total amount of energy devoted to work is greater than in “normal” employment.
Women are the ones who tend to lose the most in this equation, because they already experience more burnout and carry more of the burden when it comes to work-life balance. So, the cocktail can be explosive.
Furthermore, if women are no longer present in the workplace, they miss out on opportunities for feedback and to establish contacts that can improve and forward their careers.
These “lazy” jobs are also more vulnerable to layoffs. A job that can be done in a few hours, from home and without much supervision, is also likely to be the first to disappear if the company goes through a bad patch, explains Meghan McArdle in her article for the Wall Street Journal.
On the other hand, those who advocate for lazy girl jobs often forget that, although we have to work to live and not live to work, and individual’s personal fulfillment is closely linked to their job, because our jobs are usually how we make a contribution to society. Therefore, how a person understands the importance of their work affects their conception of their own dignity.
Several experts have highlighted this. In his book “Bullshit Jobs,” American anthropologist and anarchist David Graeber points out that, “although at first glance it may be attractive to think about doing very little and getting paid for it, individuals who feel that their jobs are ineffective have a much higher incidences of depression and anxiety”.
Graeber explains: “Humans may or may not be cut out for regular nine-to-five labour discipline – it seems to me that there is considerable evidence that they aren’t – but even hardened criminals generally find the prospect of just sitting around doing nothing even worse…. It’s not just an assault on the person’s sense of self-importance but also a direct attack on the very foundations of the sense that one even is a self. A human being unable to have a meaningful impact on the world ceases to exist.”
Let’s just say Generation Z is not going to gain in mental health with the lazy job philosophy.
It is true that a paradigm shift is needed in relation to work, and that Gen Z-ers seem especially aware of this (which is why they are making it difficult for the corporate world). But it may be that the #LazyGirlJob trend does not fully represent the transformation they’re looking for. Although who knows, maybe it will help us move in the right direction.